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According
to the Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network, 38 per
cent of children in the six counties live in homes
which have below 30 per cent of average incomes after
housing costs. One in three lone parents go regularly
without food to enable their children to eat. (Belfast
Telegraph, 27 September 2002). Republicans will
be disturbed by these facts. The 1916 Proclamation
states as a Republican objective to "cherish
the children of the nation equally", something
very relevant when one sees how children today are
cherished unequally.
It
might be objected that by African or East European
standards, even the most deprived in the North can
consider themselves relatively well off. Two week's
unemployment benefit in Belfast is worth one month
salary of a bank clerk in Budapest. But material deprivation
is not just to be measured quantitatively (in terms
of financial income) but also in its qualitative consequences.
Someone relatively well off can decide, for example,
to live in any area of town, whereas someone dependent
on housing benefits or a very small budget is constrained
to live in the affordable areas. This is particularly
tragic for some. The Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty
Network established that 69 per cent of households
in
interface communities earn less than £5000.
If they could afford it, they would certainly move
away from such difficult areas. Any parent wants to
be able to offer the best to their children. Because
of such limited financial resources, parents are not
even able to offer their children a peaceful place
to grow up. Children have the universal right to grow
up in a peaceful environment, and a child in Alliance
Avenue, because his/her family's lack of money will
have to put up with things like pipe bombs.
Apart
from the violence related to the political situation,
children growing up in working class areas will also
have to put up with other violence associated to those
areas: joyriding, drugs, hoods, etc. This is a hindrance
to a good quality of life. The reign of freedom begins
where the kingdom of necessity ends, and comfortable
financial resources gives you the freedom that living
in material necessity does not allow you. Because
of relative material deprivation, there are constraints
on 38 per cent of our children to realise themselves
as human beings. Culture and education are a privilege.
How many more Michel Angelos and Mozarts for example
would there be if working class children could afford
to have access to educational and cultural resources
of the highest standard? Just imagine that this joyrider
or that glue sniffer could have been perhaps a Joyce
or a Picasso! Socialism is not just about giving everybody
a roof, food and health care (otherwise prisons would
be an example of socialism!); it is about, through
removing the constraint of material deprivation, giving
people the possibility to realise themselves as human
beings; it is to quote Marx and Engels "an association
in which the free development of each is the condition
for the free development of all". The leap in
the reign of freedom means that anyone in whom there
is a potential Raphael or Michelangelo should be able
to develop without material hindrance. That is why
we are Republican Socialists.
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